Next Nature – a philosopher redefines technology as part of nature
grist.org
grist.org
Van Mensvoort wants "nature" to mean "uncontrollable". This is doubly misleading, because not only does it include traffic jams (in car-favoring political climates like the US), even the most untouched wilderness is in practice controlled, as it only exists thanks to human civilization making laws to preserve it. The definition of "nature" becomes even more politicized than it already is, as whether something can be controlled or not is largely politics.
The traditional definition has its problems, but just because there's no clear boundary between nature and culture doesn't make the distinction meaningless. Van Mensvoort should coin a new word or phrase for his concept.
In one vein, nature in it's modern form can simply be rationalized simply as 'uncontrived'. In this respect the article is certainly insightful in that even contrived systems can have emergent properties that cannot be contrived, that must be something other than 'man made'. However nature has always had a noble connotation, and emergent complications that are inarguably [poorly controlled / anticipated / understood] that only stand to ultimately reenforce the futility of our ambition will ever be deemed noble.
Nature is saturated with self organized critical systems (much akin to traffic) but I don't know know that we can see ourselves as pebbles in an avalanche, to do so is unkindly.
(If you only know Lewis as a Christian apologist and writer of children's fiction, don't be misled; this is C S Lewis the eminent university professor sharing the fruits of his very considerable erudition.)
I've yet to read TFA, but, I disagree with this. Natural vs artificial is a false dichotomy, and the existing definition of nature (a biblical remnant) is hampering our ability to envision our world properly, form IT to GMO to medically assisted procreation to climate change to general AI.
Humans are primates, we're part of nature as is everything we create. Artificial just is a subset of natural.
What is evolving is the information vector.
It's been DNA for billions of years, then culture (brain to brain), which actually predates humanity. Big cats learn hunting by imitation. Birds of the same species but of different locations sing different, learned songs, non human primates communicate symbolically and have regional accents.
We refined language, oral communication and developed mnemonic techniques like story telling, singing and poetry, which all must have been technological revolutions when they were invented (technology is a subset of culture).
We then started to externalize it with engraved, then manuscript then printed writing.
Then off course came telecommunication and computers, which are able to manipulate information independently.
This has been a continuum, and trying to set humans aside just because you happen to be one is a mistake.
On one side, you have green nuts who reject en masse nuclear energy (which would help mitigate the ongoing greenhouse cataclysm) and GMO (Monsanto's practices and products are horrible, but one shouldn't throw the baby with the bathwater). On the other one you have conservatives who reject social and reproductive progress because it goes against imaginary "laws of nature".
Now general AI is around the corner, and brains will likely go the way of the dodo.
We're going to get squeezed between global warming/ocean acidification and the robotic revolution. That's not a bad thing in the grand scheme of things, but it won't be pleasant when it occurs.
If we want a chance to make the right decisions to make it at least less painful, we should be armed with the best available mental tools, and putting ourselves out of nature is a basic mistake that we should avoid. We're not magic.
You can argue that "nature" is not a useful categorization, and that it's mostly used for political arguments, but the proposed redefinition only makes that problem worse. And it still doesn't solve the problem of marginal cases. All it accomplishes is making the word "nature" more confusing.
How does the redefinition make anything worse?
My take is that, since nature is everything there is, it becomes useless as a concept and can be safely eliminated from the discourse. Its current definition is poisonous.
> I disagree with this. Natural vs artificial is a false dichotomy (...) Humans are primates, we're part of nature as is everything we create. Artificial just is a subset of natural.
There's a good illustration of that point that surprisingly is not XKCD:
When Darwin realized that we were in fact just an extension of the animals he found a new perspective that was very helpful to understand the world around us. It wasn't that evolution is true, it's just the best model we to explain biology.
That perspective is immensely useful for all sorts of applications and thats what Mensvoort is trying to do.
You are indirecting repeating the same argument the people who opposed his theories did. Making humans part of the animal kingdom hurt communication. Of course the question is whats the point of that communication?
Creating another word doesn't provide the perspective he is trying to achieve. His challenge isn't going to be clarity but like Darwin to get people even to accept the idea that it's the same.
Now that might in the end form a new theory that will require a new name (just like Darwin did when his insight was that animals and humans are part of the same tree), but the insight is not a new word but instead the insight it would represent.
You can take the term "a theory of evolution" away and it's still as insightful a perspective (humans come from apes).
I tried to explore it partly here http://000fff.org/he-power-of-digital-ecoystems trying to define digital ecosystems as an extension of biological ones.
I would even go so far as to claim that technology is the result of our genes "trying to" find ways to spread themselves. Technology is a much better medium for that than human evolution. Biology, technology. They are both systems that carry information, pattern recognizing feedback loops that extend themselves further and further.
[1] http://kk.org
http://www.amazon.com/Ecology-without-Nature-Rethinking-Envi...
Redefining free will? So last-millenium...
Cool story though!